Nitrogen has been at the centre of ongoing tensions in Dutch agricultural policy. Mirjam Schoonhoven-Speijer explores the history of the tensions and some proposed solutions.Mirjam is a post-doctorate researcher at Wageningen University. She’s interested in the informal part of food systems, because this is where, especially in the Global South, most of the exchanges in food systems happen. Yet it is also undervalued in research, policy and practice. Her PhD research, also at Wageningen University, involved a comparison of formal and informal market governance arrangements in the Ugandan oilseeds sector. The deceptively simple question of ‘how exchanges in food markets actually work and evolve in daily practice’ makes her tick. She explores this question with an interdisciplinary background in anthropology, development studies, sociology, agricultural economics, and innovation studies.

This personal essay by Matthew Kessler was originally published in Tangle News, an independent, subscriber-supported media organization that covers the biggest politics stories in the U.S. by summarizing arguments from the right, left, and center (then "our take").  Matthew Kessler is the creator, host and producer of TABLE's food systems podcast, Feed, and has spent the past 15 years moving between farms, kitchens, universities, and recording studios. From 2022-2024, Matthew led a 2-year podcast project exploring four different futures for meat and livestock, adapted from Tara Garnett's Gut feelings essay. 

Games at TABLE will soon be launched as the first food-systems-focused serious games library to encourage future project collaborations and support food system education, research, and broader transformation. Serious game expert Federico Andreotti provides an overview of serious games around farming and food systems, with three examples of existing serious games designed by students at Wageningen University.Federico is a lecturer and researcher at Wageningen University. He is the game expert of the CiFoS research team, and coordinator of the WUR Games Hub that connects multiple researchers that use games to bridge science and society. Federico’s PhD project was on the co-design and application of serious games for the sustainability transition of farming and food systems; his current research and education focus is on games design and play and participatory research methods to explore futures farming and food systems. Via “Games at TABLE” he aims to foster an international community connecting game researchers and designers across the globe, encompassing social sciences, natural sciences, and design. These partnerships may serve to develop effective strategy games and engage players with agency: decision makers who play and take action to transform systems.https://www.doi.org/10.56661/d1243efe

Intrigued by a news story about smuggled cocaine seized in a shipment of asparagus, researcher Azam Lashkari explored an unlikely connection between a booming agro-industry in Peru and an international effort to control cross-continental drug trade.Azam is a postdoctoral scientist and mathematical agroecologist at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK. Her research is concerning the role of climate change on food production. She uses data and mathematical models to explain and predict crop response to increasing temperature and drought. Beside her main research, she is interested in socio-economic aspects of climate change and human behaviour on environment.

Growing crops in the mountainous rural areas of Guatemala presents unique challenges, and farmers there rely on a mix of Indigenous practice and new experimental treatments of bio-inputs, infused with micro-organisms. Nathan Einbinder writes about the farmers he met in Guatemala who are innovating collaboratively within their communities to instil resilience and sustainability on their farms.Nathan Einbinder is a lecturer and researcher specializing in agroecology and food systems. Since 2009, he has worked with Indigenous farmers and organizations in the Maya-Achí territory of Guatemala, on issues related to community development, traditional knowledge and soil health, and more recently, homemade biological inputs. This research was conducted while the author was working at the University of Plymouth.Also published in Spanish.https://www.doi.org/10.56661/cf0704b0

Blue food is too often left out of debates on food systems and food security. The physical inaccessibility of aquatic creatures, habitat and resources create their cultural invisibility - meaning their role in solutions goes unexplored, and key issues unaddressed. Learning from the Blue Humanities, IIED Researcher Giulia Nicolini calls on us to think blue food back into food systems - and so into their transformation. This essay draws on IIED’s ‘What about seafood?’ paper and work on aquatic foods. Giulia Nicolini is a researcher at the International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED). She works at the intersection of food and environmental issues, including blue foods and their role in the future of the UK food system. Giulia is also a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Exeter, based in the Centre for Rural Policy Research. Her doctoral research explores how taste and demand for seaweed as a food are changing in the UK.

In early 2024, the MESA team held a workshop in Colombia. The discussion in the room framed the main similarities and differences in relation to nature for each of three agricultural approaches: organic agriculture, agroecology and regenerative agriculture. Camilo Ardila Galvis joined TABLE in December 2023 as part of the team at the University of the Andes (School of Government) in Colombia. He holds a BA in Economics, MA in Development Studies and MSc in Agroecology.This essay is also available in Spanish.

The Dublin Declaration is a pro-livestock statement that emerged from a Summit held in Ireland on the societal role of meat. While the Declaration has had influence in EU spaces, it has also attracted considerable criticism for its limited engagement with the climate, nature and social implications of the current livestock system, and for its authors’ apparent connections to the meat industry. Irina Herzon, who co-authored a response to the Declaration published in Nature Food in August, argues that, irrespective of those connections, the Declaration provides an example of a flawed scientific advocacy that should make us wary. Here, she sets out how selective evidence and unwarranted polarisation can compromise the integrity of academic engagement. 

Student and dairy farmer Joe Lyall rejects polarising food system solutions and finds balance between food and nature in regenerative agriculture while reflecting on his family’s business. This essay is based on a submission to TABLE’s 2024 Essay Challenge.